Weekend 3 of 52.

Saint Patrick's Day Festival at Cheonggyecheon Stream, Subway Art Gallery, Dongdaemun Market, Dongdaemun Gate, Haechi of Seoul, Doota Shopping Center, Burger King

Saint Patrick provided us with a ready made Saturday. The Irish Association of Korea (yes, this exists) puts on a parade every year down at Cheonggyecheon Stream. Cheonggyecheon is actually an ancient stream (like 1300s ancient) where wives used to do their laundry. Eventually the stream got grubby and they slowly filled it in and covered it with a highway. In 2005, the stream was uncovered again to promote environmental friendliness and human interaction. And, even though it was freezing out, because the winter high temperature in Seoul only lasts for a quarter of a minute apparently, there were people gathered down at the stream.

Back down in the subway, we serendipitously (not my name, by the way) stumbled upon a small art gallery. There was a sketch exhibit chronicling the artist's time in Nepal. We almost bought his book, and then we didn't, and then we were sad about it.

Also in the subway randomly, a little gallery for Seoul's mascot, Haechi. Does your city have a cute mythical mascot? No, obviously not. Haechi is a little guy whose job is to keep watch over everyone in Seoul. We wound up at a gallery and gift shop space in his honor. Also, free lollipops.

We saw the Dongdaemun stop on the subway on our way down to Cheonggyecheon, so I told Dan that Dongdaemun Market was on our list and we should stop by after the festival. The market is basically a huge, huge flea market. It winds down city streets and even underground. There's also more conventional shopping in Dongdaemun. We ended up at an 8 story mall called Doota and had Burger King on its 7th floor and coffee down on the 5th. We didn't buy anything at all until we were headed back to the subway for home and we saw some chair cushions. We sit on hard wooden chairs for many hours every day, and we noticed that Dan's clever Korean co-workers all have seat cushions. We bought blue sporty ones that are embroidered with the exhortation to "Be Happy".

Before all that, on Friday night, we, with Korrine, found a local Korean Barbecue place. We ate (a lot) for only W5000 each. A young Korean couple at the table next to us helped us order. They saw our aimless gesticulating and took pity on us, as Koreans are wont to do.

Park Yong Ha and Korean BBQ.

I mentioned that we were going to a Korean hip hop concert. That was only partially true. Our friend Jeannie dances with some b-girls, and they, along with some b-boys, danced back up for Korean pop artist Park Yong Ha. I tried to find a good page with pictures, but I couldn't. He is a Korean drama actor (read: Soap Star), also a singer, and he is huge in Japan. Most of the women at the concert had traveled from Japan. So big is he in Japan that all of his songs are in Japanese and most of his dialogue with the audience was in Japanese, which was fun for Dan to try and decipher. Anyway, Yong Ha is meant to be pretty dreamy.